Myst IV: Revelation Review

Introduction

When I looked at the ads for Myst IV, I saw another entry in
the Myst universe, not written using the Uru 3D engine, which
meant no more jumping and running. How could I not be
drooling over this game? I suppose that Uru should have
given me a hint or two about the current directions in game
design for the Myst universe. I enjoyed the continuation
of the Myst story, but this game was a mixed experience
for both me and my wife.

Graphics (quality, animations, cut scenes)

This is an easy description. Myst IV has the best graphics
of any game I have ever played (or seen). The graphics are stunning
and realistic, and the entire game feels alive. Light levels change
due to cloud movement, tree branches move in the wind, birds and
insects fly around you, and the wildlife notices you and interacts
with you (usually to run away).

It really doesn't get any better than this.

Sound (music, voices, special effects)

Revelation took sound effects to a new level with this game.
The interaction cursor is a hand, and you can tap on any surface
within reach. Hot spots do hot-spot things, but all other
surfaces elicit a sound when tapped, and the sound is
always something that matched the material. Crystals clinked,
wood thunked, metal clanked, and so on.

The music was good, although not up to the sheer wonder of
the original Myst game. They even included a vocal piece by
Peter Gabriel, who also did some of the voice work.

Voice acting was good throughout, with the only weak spot being
Yeesha. The girl's voice was rather monotone and under-acted, but I
suppose it must be really hard to find a ten year old who can act
very well.

The only jarring note was the sound of your character's
footsteps. I really don't make that much noise when I walk,
and I really think they should have been eliminated or
reduced in volume.

Story (plot, theme, depth)

As usual, I will decline to describe much of the plot in the game.
The game's plot is more explicit than that of the original
Myst, but there are long stretches of the game where you learn
about the story from people's journals and personal belongings. I
found the story to be complex enough to keep me interested and
complete enough to be satisfying. If nothing else, I learned more
about Yeesha when she was a child (she was weird even when
younger).

Characters (depth, development, interaction)

Your interaction with the various characters is minimal,
and anything you learn about the characters is through
reading their journals, rooting through their personal
belongings, listening to flashbacks, and watching them
in a few FMV sequences. I must say that it all worked
for me: I may not have gotten to really know them, but
I at least learned enough for the purposes of the game.

Puzzles (difficulty, uniqueness, suitability, ugliness, linearity)

This is where the game went downhill in a hurry.

Myst 4 throws timed sequences at you in several places, and
some of them are darned hard—hard enough that the
manufacturer felt obligated to slow one of them down when
they issued a patch. The timed sequences are truly pointless
and infuriating.

If timed puzzles weren't bad enough, the game designers did
what I can only call "cheating". Many clues and puzzles were
intentionally vague or misdirecting, which sometimes forced
me to try multiple possible solutions, even though I knew
exactly what I needed to do, and I had all of the relevant
information sitting in front of me. For example, one puzzle
involved crstal shapes, and the designers appeared to have
intentionally made two of the crystals look very much alike.
Identifying the correct crystal was an exercise in
frustration, when I felt it should have been an exercise in
brain power alone. The puzzles were difficult enough without
the intentional misdirection and vagueness inserted by the
game's designers.

I will also accuse the game of containing mazes. Not
because there were lots of passages that all looked alike,
but because several of the worlds visited had many, many
curved paths, all of them with very similar looking
surroundings. This was an easy game in which to get lost.

Most puzzles are well integrated with the story and the
environment, but there are some number of them that are just
dropped in place to block your progress; they have no
correlation or integration with the game in any way.

Controls (user interface)

First the good news: the game had a good set of options,
including gamma, brightness, and contrast controls. You
could also control screen resolution, as well as various
other settings that allowed you to run the game on a slower
machine and video card.

The cursor was an animated hand, and it would indicate hot
spots or possible close up views by changing shape. The
problem was with the speed of this animation: it was so slow
that I would see some cursor shape change when it was halfway
across the screen from the actual hot spot. This slow cursor
resulted in you slooowwwly moving your cursor around the
screen. Not a good design.

The control panel where you chose options, save game, load
gane, etc., was driven 100% by mystery meat navigation. What
you see is a disk with about 8 buttons on it, none of them
labelled. You had to hover your cursor over the button
before it would display what was hidden behind that button.
More poor design.

Bugs or problems

There were no subtitles available. There was a menu option
to turn them on, but it indicated that only the Dutch
language was available. Even that was a lie—you couldn't
turn the subtitles on, even in Dutch.

Install/Uninstall

Make sure you have a lot of disk space available. The
package indicates that you will need three gigabytes of disk
space, but that is for the minimal installation only. I
recommend you choose the maximum installation option to
eliminate pauses and delays while the game loads a lot of
data from your DVD drive. The maximum install option will
require over eight gigabytes of free disk space, but the only
time it looks at the DVD is at game startup, when it does the
copy protection check.

On XP, Myst 4 installs a Safedisc device driver on your
machine, and does not uninstall the damn thing. Uninstalling
it from the device manager doesn't work—it just reinstalls
itself the next time you boot.

To see if you have been "infected":

Right click My Computer and select properties

Select Hardware tab

Click on Device Manager button

Select View Hidden Devices from the View menu

Expand Non-Lug and Play Drivers section

Look for secdrv device driver

To remove:

Right click secdrv device driver and select uninstall

Do NOT reboot when asked

Delete the file WINDOWS\system32\drivers\SECDRV.SYS

Now you can reboot

It took me a while to find my saved games (not in the game
folder, but under My Documents)

Pros

Outstanding graphics, animations, and video sequences

Great sound effects and music

Cons

Safedisc copy protection driver not uninstalled

Timed sequences

Intentional misdirection and vague clues

Mystery meat navigation

Cursor animation was far too slow

No subtitles

Conclusion

Myst IV: Revelation is a game that I will recommend, but with
warnings attached. It's immersive, graphically stunning, has
a good story, and some really good puzzles. But (and it's a
big but), it can be a damned frustrating game at times,
sometimes to the point of completely ruining your gaming
experience.